Resources: Tools for Business

The CEO Water Mandate website is designed to make a clear business case for corporate action on water and provides access to an array of resources relevant to companies seeking to better understand how they can improve their water performance and reduce water-related business risks. It also serves as a robust source of information to help companies and their stakeholders learn more about corporate water stewardship and the Mandate’s position within that emerging space.

The CEO Water Mandate Water Action Hub is an online site designed to help companies efficiently identify potential collaborators and engage with them in water-related collective action to improve water management in regions of critical strategic interest. The tool allows users to identify potential collective action opportunities via river basins, organizations, projects, and collaboration action areas. The Pacific Institute, as part of the Secretariat of the UN Global Compact CEO Water Mandate, helped develop the Water Action Hub and the Guide to Water-Related Collective Action to work hand-in-hand in helping businesses effectively develop a collective action engagement around water management.

The Pacific Institute and its collaborators, the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, the ISEAL Alliance, OneWorldStandards, and Real Reason, have launched two new websites – Framing Sustainability Standardsand Sustainability Standards 101– that use “framing” to demystify key concepts and issues related to sustainability standards. By talking about social and environmental standards in straightforward ways with engaging illustrations that define the issues, the new web tools help communicate to the layperson the unique role and value of sustainability standards systems in furthering sustainable development.

WECalc asks users a series of questions about their home water use habits, and based on inputted replies, estimates their water use and provides personalized recommendations for reducing it. WECalc also estimates users’ water-related energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions and shows them how much they can save — and how to do it.

The free Urban Water Demand to 2100 modelfrom the Pacific Institute helps water managers to forecast urban water demand with four global climate change models and compare different possible futures to the year 2100 by altering greenhouse gas emissions, population projections, conservation and efficiency measures, and more. This flexible modeling tool allows users to run their own scenarios, comparing how a range of factors in a range of climate change scenarios is likely to affect future patterns of water use in their specific areas.

The Water–Energy Simulator (WESim)is an easy-to-use analytical tool that can be used to evaluate the energy and greenhouse gas implications of water management decisions. The Excel-based model allows the user to explore a range of possible scenarios, such as increased demand for water resources, the development of alternative water and energy sources, and needed water treatment improvements resulting from emerging contaminants and stricter water-quality guidelines. WESim can be applied by individual water and energy utilities, groups of utilities, and policymakers and decision makers.

To give water managers a better understanding of the relationship between water management decisions, energy consumption, and air quality the Pacific Institute has created two Water to Air Models. One model is for urban water districts and the other for agricultural districts. The models provide a flexible but consistent framework for quantifying the energy and air quality dimensions of water management decisions.

The Pacific Institute has developed the Cost Effectiveness of Water Conservation and Efficiency (CE2) Model to help evaluate the economic desirability of water conservation and efficiency measures and explore how costs and benefits can be shared among customers, water utilities, and other entities. The model helps document the costs of starting and running a conservation program and estimate the associated water, energy, and financial savings.

For more than a decade, the biennial reportThe World’s Water has provided key data and expert insights into our most pressing freshwater issues. Worldwater.org is dedicated to providing information and resources to help protect and preserve fresh water around the globe.

Circle of Blue WaterNews is a daily extension of Circle of Blue’s long-form journalistic and scientific coverage of the global freshwater crisis and its solutions. From breaking headlines and the latest research to emerging trends and success stories and challenges, WaterNews is a great resource for comprehensive, engaging freshwater coverage.

In an ongoing effort to understand the connections between water resources, water systems, and international security and conflict, the Pacific Institute initiated the Water Conflict Chronologyproject in the late 1980s to track and categorize events related to water and conflict. The Water Conflict Chronology is also available in Spanish (2008 version).Cronología de los Conflictos del Agua en Español (versión actualizada en 2008).